


Feathers

by lyricwritesprose



Category: Good Omens (TV)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Flying, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Marriage Proposal, Picnic, Sort Of, Wingfic, beautiful art omg, characters believe they are going to die, good omens mini-bang, mini-bang fic, romantic but ace friendly, south downs cottage is somewhere in the future of this, the first four thousand words kick you in the feels and the rest is recovery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-28
Updated: 2020-08-11
Packaged: 2021-03-05 20:21:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 11,659
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25561252
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lyricwritesprose/pseuds/lyricwritesprose
Summary: Angels don’t lose their feathers.  They’re not birds.  An angel’s wings are not just wings, they’re a physical manifestation of their nature, and that doesn’t change.  Does it?Demons have lost their feathers once.  After the Fall, when they were remade for their new role in the universe.  But that’s over and done with.  Demons can’t Fall again, and they certainly can’t Rise.  They can’t even fly.Despite this, Aziraphale and Crowley are losing feathers.  Maybe they’re dying.  Maybe something altogether more ineffable is going on.
Relationships: Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens)
Comments: 157
Kudos: 303
Collections: Good Omens Mini Bang





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I collaborated with two _incredible_ artists on this! You can find Rhea [here](https://miesreveries.carrd.co/) and kerkusa [here.](https://kerkusa.carrd.co/)

Crowley called three times before he came to the bookshop, once from home, twice while he wove through the streets of London, smashing traffic laws. He came closer than he would have liked to smashing himself. His usual technique of assuming that traffic and pedestrians would get out of his way felt heavy, like trying to lift something against too much gravity. He didn’t care. The memory of the last time Aziraphale hadn't answered—the memory of not being able to find him at all—added an edge of panic to Crowley's already roiling emotions. And he could  _ feel _ Aziraphale, he knew he was there, but—

He pulled up across from the bookshop, lunged out of the Bentley, caused a fender-bender on his way across the street, and burst into the bookshop. "Angel? Angel, I have to—" He swallowed. "Have to tell you something."

Aziraphale was sitting very still. Statue-like. For a moment, Crowley didn't know if he was even going to react to his presence.

Then, without looking up from his folded hands, Aziraphale said quietly, "I don't think that's appropriate anymore."

It hit like a slap to the face. Crowley recoiled.  _ We're not friends. I don't even like you. _

_ It's over, Crowley. _ Aziraphale didn't  _ need _ Crowley anymore, did he? No more need for the Arrangement.

Well, that was convenient. He very likely wouldn't have Crowley for much longer. "It's not an endearment," Crowley lied, "it's your  _ species, _ for Hell's sake. Like calling a human, ‘human.’ Look, I—" More lies. "Don't actually care what you think of me. If you don't like me, that's—that's good, actually. Makes things easier. Although you do a blessed good imitation of someone who  _ does _ care, which can be—could be blessed  _ cruel _ under the right circumstances, so—" No, that was a distraction. It was all distraction. "I need to tell you—"

"That's just it," Aziraphale said, looking up. "Species."

His face was very calm.

"What're you talking about?"

"My species." He paused for a long moment, so long that Crowley opened his mouth to ask him what the Heaven he was on about. "I'm all right," Aziraphale went on finally. "I think I really am actually all right. So I don't want  _ you _ to start panicking over it, my dear."

Crowley bared his teeth. "If I don't get to call you 'angel,' you don't get to drop 'my dear' into the conversation as if you mean it. Aziraphale, what—"

"I'm  _ not,"  _ Aziraphale said.

Crowley looked at him.

Aziraphale was  _ miserable. _ Still, calm, and absolutely devastated. Crowley moved forward instinctively. "Angel, what's wrong? Talk to me. Actually talk to me."

A white feather popped out of nowhere and drifted slowly downwards. Aziraphale watched it. "I'm not an angel," he said. "Anymore."

The feather drifted sideways, spinning as it fell, finally coming to rest near Aziraphale's shoe.

Crowley stared at it. Angels didn't lose their feathers. Demons didn't lose their feathers. They weren't birds. They didn't molt. Feathers grew back in when they were damaged—sometimes—but demons and angels didn’t lose feathers without massive trauma. Wings were—they were less  _ wings, _ the way the material world understood them, and more a tangible manifestation of what an angel or a demon  _ was. _

But angels did lose their feathers when they Fell. Crowley remembered. Remembered, vividly, the crushing weakness, the dread of being unmade, and then the rage, as the feathers came in black, of knowing he had been  _ remade. _

"In a way," Aziraphale said, "it's just as well. I have had—many thoughts. About Heaven. About God. Thoughts that I don't think are—entirely appropriate for my former position."

"Sod that!" It burst out of Crowley before he even realized he was going to speak. "If God is willing to condemn Their best angel for  _ thoughts, _ then God is—" He couldn't think of a sufficiently strong epithet.

"The one who decides," Aziraphale said, with a mournful flicker of a smile.. “Crowley, please. Don’t  _ worry _ about it.” He tried to force a more cheerful expression onto his face. It didn’t work. He still looked desperately unhappy. “I’ve made my peace with it.”

“Don’t. Don’t tell me that. Aziraphale—”

“I won’t lie to you and tell you that I’m not frightened. I am, of—a great many things. I’ve never tried living without Grace, and, of course, Hell having a claim on me—but it doesn’t  _ matter, _ don’t you see.”

“It matters more than anything! Aziraphale—”

“It doesn’t matter,” Aziraphale went on, with maddening calm, “because I know for a fact that being a demon doesn’t turn someone into a monster. I—will change, I assume, and I’m frightened of changing, but at the end of it, I am not going to be a ravening beast, and I know that, because—well, because I’ve seen  _ you. _ I’ve known you. Down through the centuries, I’ve known you, and you have never been less than—not to put too fine a point on it, you’ve never been less than  _ me. _ So—I am not going to rage against a change that puts me closer to what you are, Crowley. I think perhaps I’m supposed to. Curse my fate, hate it, plead with an unfeeling sky and despair. I won’t.  _ I refuse.” _

_ “Aziraphale,” _ Crowley said.

Aziraphale looked at him, and then looked at what was in his hand. “What . . .”

He processed it, and his eyes widened.

“I’m losing feathers too,” Crowley said, twitching the long black primary feather between his fingers.

Aziraphale, for the first time, looked actively upset rather than passively unhappy. “I don’t understand. You can’t Fall  _ twice. _ Can you?” He got up and looked at the feather in Crowley’s hand, carefully not touching it—not wanting the intimacy, Crowley assumed, even though the feather was no longer a part of him. “I don’t suppose—nobody has ever heard of a demon Rising. It’s always been assumed that it isn’t possible. But—”

“It isn’t,” Crowley said harshly. “And if it  _ was _ possible, it wouldn’t be me, because I  _ haven’t _ forgiven God, and I don’t believe that I was completely in the wrong, and that would have to be the first step, wouldn’t it? A good grovel. No, I don’t think—I don’t think you’re Falling, and I know I’m not Rising. Something else is going on.”

“What, then?”

“When you reach for miracle power, where is it coming from?”

“From inside myself,” Aziraphale said, “for the last few days, anyway. Heaven has narrowed my connection to the point that—”

“That you might as well be cut off,” Crowley said. “Me, too. Cut off. I think they must be talking to each other again.” He had thought they’d have more than a year or two before Heaven and Hell made a move. He had hoped for decades. Centuries.

“Why would that be causing this, though?” Crowley could tell from the look on Aziraphale’s face that he wasn’t actually asking Crowley. He was thinking through the problem. Aziraphale could be silly, could be stubbornly wrong, could be extremely foolish at times, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t brilliant the rest of the time. Crowley didn’t admit—might never get to admit to Aziraphale—that he loved to see that mind at work, see it focus on a problem like a magnifying glass focusing the light of the sun, until whatever was beneath the glass slowly but surely caught fire.

Intent on Aziraphale’s expression as he was, Crowley caught the exact moment when he reached the conclusion Crowley had already guessed at. Aziraphale swallowed.

“Pretty much everything needs food,” Crowley said. “Except us.”

“Everything in the Earthly sphere needs food,” Aziraphale protested, but Crowley could tell he wasn’t certain of himself. “That leaves two large portions of the universe where that law doesn’t apply.”

“What if it does? What if angels and demons are ‘fed’ by our access to our realms? What if your Grace doesn’t just feed you power? What if it sustains you?”

“That would imply that the same would apply to you, and your . . .” Aziraphale waved vaguely. Most demons referred to the source of power as the Defilement, in the spirit, Crowley supposed, of  _ we’re the opposite of Heaven, so what’s the opposite of Grace? Own it and rub their faces in it. _ Aziraphale had always been uncomfortable talking about it. Crowley realized suddenly that he had never heard the word  _ Defilement _ come out of Aziraphale’s lips, and he wondered why that was.

“Yeah. Makes sense. We’re both sustained by our respective realms.”

“And now that we’re not—”

Crowley swallowed. “I think,” he said, “we starve.”

As if to punctuate the moment, a inky-black covert feather slipped into the material universe and drifted towards the floor.

Aziraphale paused, looking stricken. Then— ”No.”

“Can you think of anything else it could be?”

“That was  _ no _ as in  _ I refuse to accept that fate. _ I need books.” He moved towards the back of the shop, hands fluttering as if he was already running them over the spines of the volumes. “Books on arcane power. There are humans who have made a study of these things. I wonder . . .”

Crowley followed him. “Just tell me what I can do.” This was Aziraphale’s area of expertise, not his. He was an improviser. He was the one who came up with a solution when death was breathing down their necks. He was not the one who found the solution in books.

“I have a few volumes of Dee that you could review,” Aziraphale said absently, but he wasn’t seeing Crowley. Wasn’t noticing him. He was diving into his world of arcane texts, and Crowley didn’t exist there.

On his way to the bookshop, Crowley had been thinking that it was a good thing, the many parts of Aziraphale’s life that he didn’t belong in. If Crowley was to disappear, it was good that Aziraphale had other things in his life.

But now, Aziraphale was in danger as well, and Crowley couldn’t do anything. As if he wasn’t even there.

§

“Humans,” Aziraphale said, “have written a great many things about sources of power for magic. It remains to be seen how many of them are accurate. Or . . . any.”

Crowley felt heavier. Or perhaps he felt as if he was trying to walk through liquid. Things—all sorts of little things, like walking—were getting more difficult. “That’s human magic, though,” he pointed out. “It’s different from what we do.”

“Not completely. Things like my contact circle, those are very similar to ritual magic. And at any rate, ritual magic is not the only sort that humans use.” He put a book on the desk. “Virtually all human cultures have some concept of places of power. Several also posit—well, lines of significance, effectively, from one place to another.”

“Ley lines,” Crowley said.

“Ley lines are a fairly recent formulation of the idea, and by no means the most comprehensive. The native Australians make the English look like Johnny-come-latelies to the concept, and my goodness, do they have  _ opinions _ about the correct way to respect the lines across the land. The important point is, there may be a major ley line crossing beneath London.”

Crowley thought about it.  _ “Which bit _ of London?”

“Hard to say. This book,” he patted it, “goes on at length about these lines connecting places that were sacred to ancient humans, but if there was a stone circle or similar in London, I’m sure it’s long since been carted away for masonry. But I did have an idea.”

“What is it?”

“A modified contact circle. A very heavily modified contact circle. We might be able to draw power from the ley even if we’re not on top of it, if it exists, if it’s remotely compatible with our, for lack of a better word, biology.” Aziraphale was already moving the rug. “Be a dear and miracle me a tin of white paint, will you?”

Crowley did so, and then nearly spilled the paint as a wave of dizziness hit him. Two more black feathers manifested and drifted downwards.

Aziraphale was in front of him, taking the paint from his hand and looking at him with concern. “Are you all right?”

“Nghh. I think—whatever you’re going to do, you’d better do it soon.”

“Yes, I do believe you’re right.” Aziraphale produced a paintbrush and then, apparently, had to fight dizziness himself. “Still,” he said, as he knelt next to the circle, “I believe the  _ principle _ is sound. A contact circle is a conduit from one place to another; this needs to be a conduit of a different sort. If you wouldn’t mind fetching the candles, my dear— _ without _ a miracle, I would think. They’re in the cupboard next to the tea.”

Crowley didn’t move. “Candles.”

“Yes, for the circle.”

“Like the ones that burned down this shop.”

Aziraphale looked up at him, and then put the paintbrush back on the paint tin lid, stood up, and made his way carefully  _ around _ the circle to where Crowley was standing. “I promise I won’t let that happen again. Crowley, we don’t have a choice. If I had more time, I  _ would _ work out how to do without the candles—and I will, once we have a little energy in our systems—but right now—” A white covert materialized very near his face and brushed down beside it. “Right now, we don’t have much time left,” Aziraphale finished softly. “You sense it too, don’t you?”

Crowley swallowed. “Yeah. Yeah, I—I can tell, too. I’ll get the candles.”

A few minutes later, Aziraphale had altered the circle—fairly radical alterations, from what Crowley could make out—and Crowley was reluctantly placing the candles at the cardinal points.

“Do you have one of these?” Aziraphale asked. “At your flat, I mean.”

Crowley shook his head. “Hell just hijacks the television. Or the radio.”

“I wonder why Heaven didn’t. Stroke of luck for us, I suppose—” Aziraphale produced his box of matches by miracle, and then shut his eyes for a moment and breathed deeply.

“I could have fetched that,” Crowley said.

“To be perfectly honest, I wasn’t sure where I left them,” Aziraphale admitted. He struck a match absently on a nearby bookshelf, which was when Crowley realized that Aziraphale still used strike-anywhere matches.

Well, of course he did. If they lived through this, Crowley was going to voice some  _ opinions _ about fire safety.

Aziraphale lit the candles and then shook out the match. The communication circle acquired a faint greenish fluorescence.

“That’s new,” Aziraphale observed. “It’s usually white.” He sounded encouraged, though.

"Is something supposed to happen?"

"There should be power coming through," Aziraphale said. He reached his hand cautiously towards the circle.

"Careful!"

"I'm  _ being _ careful. The idea is to establish a connection—"

Aziraphale's fingers crossed the boundary of the circle.

There was a green flash, one that must have been visible from the street. Crowley threw up his arm to cover his eyes, then lowered it and blinked frantically, trying to banish purple spots from his vision. "Aziraphale?  _ Aziraphale!" _

The candles were snuffed out. The circle was dark. Aziraphale had been knocked backwards and was curled up on the floor. And there were  _ multiple  _ white feathers on the floor around him.

Crowley lunged to his side. "No, no,  _ no,  _ talk to me, angel—wake up—"

"I don't sleep," Aziraphale said faintly. "Remember?' He pushed himself upright. "I don't think those energies are compatible."

"Didn't look like it."

Aziraphale swayed. Crowley put his arm around Aziraphale to steady him, and then held his breath, waiting for the angel to flinch away.

Aziraphale didn’t.

“What do we do now?” Crowley said, desperately struggling to ignore the feel of Aziraphale’s shirt under his hand, the body contact.

“I . . .” Aziraphale shook his head very slightly. “I don’t know.”

§

Feathers drifted down.

It didn’t take long for Crowley to realize that Aziraphale couldn’t get up. He put his hands underneath Aziraphale’s arms, miracled a brief burst of strength, and staggered both of them to the couch before collapsing half on top of Aziraphale as the weakness hit him. He was distantly aware of black feathers drifting down from above them. Far more aware of his cheek resting on Aziraphale’s buttons. Under any other circumstance, he would be trying to memorize every single instant, every thread, committing the contact to memory so that he could take it out and cherish it for a thousand years.

He didn’t have a thousand years.

He didn’t have one.

He twitched despite himself as Aziraphale’s arm came around him, cradling him. “It’s all right, my dear,” Aziraphale murmured. “Rest, please. Just rest.”

Crowley shook his head against Aziraphale’s chest. “Not all right,” he mumbled. It wasn’t right. It wasn’t  _ fair. _ That someone like Aziraphale should be at Heaven’s nonexistent mercy, that Heaven should cut him off like a gardener pruning an errant leaf—the universe shouldn’t be  _ run _ like that.

“I’ve thought about it,” Aziraphale said, as if he hadn’t heard Crowley.

“Don’t—” Crowley pushed himself upwards, with great effort. _“Don’t_ say that it’s all right. Don’t say it’s something you accept. Don’t act like it’s okay, because it _isn’t._ It’s horrible, it’s unfair, it’s reprehensible. If God had an iota of compassion or decency, They would _save_ you, and if They don’t, then bollocks to Them, I will blessed well die _cursing_ Them—”

“Shh. Shh.” Aziraphale’s eyes were closed, but his hand made circles on Crowley’s back. “I’m not sure we’re dying.”

“Feels like dying.” Crowley hadn’t felt like this since the Fall. Only then, there had been new, angry energy to pour into him, and now there was nothing.

“Well, I imagine it would. What if you’re right? What if this  _ is _ God, exactly what God means for us, and what She means is for us to become human?”

Grasping at straws, Crowley thought. They weren’t becoming human. It would have been a peculiar sort of mercy, filled with as many problems as pleasures, but it would have been a mercy, and God didn’t have any.

But—if Aziraphale believed it—

If Aziraphale believed it, it might make his last moments—easier. Full of hope. An angel should die with hope in his heart, shouldn’t he? Well, an angel shouldn’t  _ die, _ but still.

Crowley couldn’t do much for Aziraphale, but he could do this. He could play along.

He closed his eyes and leaned against Aziraphale. Tried to bury himself in the fantasy. “Becoming human.”

“Oh, it will be an adjustment. I won’t deny it. I’ll have to learn to sleep, wouldn’t I?”

“I’d have to eat regularly,” Crowley said. “Instead of just when I feel like it.”

“New clothes,” Aziraphale said, a note of distaste in his voice. “Regularly. And new  _ shoes.” _

“No miracles.” Which would mean massive adjustments in everything Crowley did, from driving to gardening. Except that it wasn’t real, of course, but—if it had been. “Need to actually make  _ money.” _

“I think we both have a fair amount put away,” Aziraphale said soothingly. “Perhaps not enough for a lavish lifestyle. But enough. We could—” His voice cracked a little bit. “We could retire.”

“We are retired.” They were about to be retired with prejudice.

“Well, yes, but—” Aziraphale’s voice wavered again. “It’s silly, really. Just a silly sort of—idea of mine.”

“Tell me.”

“I would like a cottage,” Aziraphale said. “Somewhere near the seaside, maybe.”

“That sounds nice,” Crowley said, aware that his voice sounded too wobbly to be convincing.

“Enough room for a library,” Aziraphale said. “And maybe a headland nearby, where we could walk up and look down at the sea. One of those chalk cliffs.” He was silent for a long moment. “I wonder what that would be like. Looking down off a cliff when you know you can’t fly.”

“A bit terrifying,” Crowley said. “Take it from me.”

“Ah. Yes. I’d forgotten.”

“Yeah. Well. Not something I talk about.”

“Maybe no headlands, then,” Aziraphale conceded. “Maybe just—hills, chalk hills with grass, where we could ramble for hours and not see another—another human, sounds funny to say, doesn’t it?”

“Yeah,” Crowley said. “Sounds funny to say.” He swallowed. “You said ‘we.’”

“Hmm?”

“We.  _ We _ could walk up and look down at the sea.”

“Well, I had rather hoped. That is. I mean. Move in with me?”

“In your cottage.”

“In our cottage. Two unremarkable humans together.”

Maybe the next thing to go was breathing. Crowley didn’t technically need air, and he was still having trouble getting enough of it. “Angel—”

“Human,” Aziraphale corrected. “That’s the point. No obligations, no superiors, no Heaven, no Hell. If you were a human, Crowley, if you were completely free, would you move into a cottage with me?”

This time, it was Crowley who was silent for far too long. “I’d be scared,” he admitted finally.

“Scared? Of what?”

“Wanting. Too much.”

“Oh, my dear. You can’t. You can’t possibly want more than I would freely give you. You have to understand—” Aziraphale’s voice wavered. “Have to understand. I can think of no one I esteem more highly. I can think of no one I’m more fond of. I would happily spend a thousand years with you, or a million, and if it’s to be a mere forty or so, I wouldn’t want to waste a single one away from your company.”

Crowley made several unspellable noises before he could speak. “You. You realize. What you just asked me?”

“What?”

“You basically said, ‘till Death do us part.’”

“Ah,” Aziraphale said. “Yes. Yes, that is—rather what I said.”

“You didn't want me to come over during quarantine! You don’t even like me!”

“The fact,” Aziraphale said, laboring on the words, “that I have frequently been terrified of liking you, and sometimes, to my shame, appalled at myself for liking you, and sometimes determined  _ not _ to like you—has never managed to alter the fact that I like you. Thank God.”

Crowley shook his head. “Don’t. Don’t thank God.” Never thank the God that was doing this to them. Never thank a God who could look at Aziraphale and see anything less than a treasure.

“Very well. Thank  _ you, _ then. I know there’s every likelihood you don’t feel the same—”

Crowley made another noise. “What do you mean, I don’t—angel, I would—” Crowley closed his eyes, aware that he might not open them again. “Okay. Cottage by the sea. I’ll live there with you. Spend every day with you. Till Death do us part. If that’s what you want, that’s what we’ll do.” He focused on the vision, trying to drive away the specter of Death, aware that there were tears at the corners of his eyes and he couldn’t quite manage it. “I can’t think of anything I want more.” He wanted. He wanted it so much that he could die of it—ironic, that—and he wasn’t going to get it. All he was ever going to get was here, on this sofa, with Aziraphale’s arm around him. And not even for much longer.

There was something he had to say. Something Aziraphale had to hear. Something he hadn’t been planning to tell Aziraphale, because he didn’t want to burden him with it, but if Aziraphale was talking about cottages by the sea, and if Aziraphale was dying too— ”They say that demons can’t love.”

There was a faint twitch in the hand on Crowley’s back. “I’m well aware of that,” Aziraphale said, and there was a waver in his voice. “Whatever you feel for me is enough.”

“That’s what I’m trying to say. ‘They’ are full of bullshit. Demons can love. I know. Because I—you—I—”

He had spent so many years terrified of saying it. Why was he still terrified of saying it, when there was nothing left to lose?

Well, there was something left to lose. He could make Aziraphale’s last moments unhappy. The only thing he had left was to make them as gentle as possible.

“Oh, my dear,” Aziraphale whispered.

There was a rustle. Crowley opened his eyes enough to see Aziraphale’s wings appear, and they looked awful—ragged, half-plucked, feathers falling just from the motion as Aziraphale brought them forward. Wrapped them around Crowley.

“I won’t get to do this again,” Aziraphale explained, and for an instant, Crowley’s heart broke, thinking that Aziraphale had accepted that they were dying. “It’s arms or nothing, from here on out.”

“Arms. Right.” Not dying. Cottage by the sea.

“But I will hold you,” Aziraphale went on, in a weak near-whisper, “whenever you want. Any time. From now until the end . . .”

Crowley leaned into the embrace, and feathers, black and white, drifted down around them like snow.


	2. Chapter 2

Crowley woke up.

This was startling in a large number of ways. He lifted his head from where it was resting on Aziraphale’s shoulder. “Z’r’phale?”

Aziraphale wasn’t moving, and his eyes were closed. Crowley didn’t think he was breathing. Of course, neither of them needed to, but habit was so strong that they both usually  _ did. _ “Aziraphale!”

And then he saw Aziraphale’s wings, still extended, and just stared for a moment.

They were, at the moment, extraordinarily ugly.

Crowley had spent some time with pirates, back in the day, and had known one woman, a ferocious pirate who generally went by Maude the Bastard. Maude the Bastard rejected all suitors, five male, two female, and one whom everyone was a bit too frightened to ask, but she had cared for one being on Earth more than most men cared for their wives, and that being was a magnificent parrot with a taste for ears—any ears that didn’t belong to Maude, anyway. It had  _ despised _ Crowley. Crowley returned the favor. But, once, before he moved to a different ship, the parrot had laid eggs, and the eggs had born chicks, which had all the visual charm of a plucked chicken crossed with a hedgehog, and the chicks matured to even less charming (more bitey) adolescents, feathers coming in as a sort of unshaven stubble—

And that was what Aziraphale’s wings looked like right now.

Right down to the fact that the immature, pokey feathers  _ weren’t white. _ Or black. “Aziraphale,” Crowley said faintly, and shook his shoulder.

“Just a  _ moment,” _ Aziraphale said peevishly, as if Crowley were an irritating customer, and then took a breath and opened his eyes. “Crowley?”

“Yeah. ‘S me.”

“I didn’t—I didn’t go to  _ sleep, _ did I?”

“I think we both did,” Crowley said. “I’m not—not sure what happened. Angel, look at your  _ wings.” _

Aziraphale looked at them, and then stared at them, in blank shock. “Blue,” he said faintly. Then,  _ “Blue? _ Crowley, when you—when you Fell, did your feathers come in—”

Crowley shook his head. “Jet black from the very beginning. Besides, when you Fall, you can  _ tell. _ Hell’s power . . .” He trailed off.

He couldn’t feel Hell’s power.

But he wasn’t completely cut off. There was power there. Crowley miracled himself a pair of spare glasses from his glove compartment, just to feel the power flow through him. “That’s new,” he said, half to himself.

“What is it?”

“Not Hell. Hell is  _ angry. _ Angry and resentful. This power—this power just feels  _ growing. _ I don’t mean that the power is increasing, I mean that it feels like—like growing-ness.”

Aziraphale closed his eyes and miracled one of his white-winged mugs to hand. After a moment, he opened them again, disturbed. “It feels like decay, too,” he said.

Crowley assessed. “Yes, it does,” he agreed finally, “but it’s a busy sort of decay. Like things are going to sprout out of it. Even if it’s just toadstools.” He closed his eyes. “There’s metal, and grime, and a—a sort of humming to it, and it’s—it’s very busy, whatever it is—

“It is, isn’t it?” Aziraphale said. “It’s not Heaven, it’s not Hell—what  _ is _ it? And—Crowley. Your wings. May I see them?”

Crowley nodded and brought his wings into reality.

If it had been a shock to see Aziraphale’s wings nearly naked, it was even more of a shock to see nearly-naked wings attached to his own body. And the color . . .  _ “Red?” _

“Red,” Aziraphale echoed. “Blue and red.”

“What does it  _ mean, _ though?”

“We’re detached from Heaven and Hell. We have a new power source and we have new  _ colors. _ I don’t think we’ve Fallen, and I don’t think we’ve Risen, but we’ve definitely done  _ something.” _ He stood up, very carefully.

“Are you all right?” Crowley asked, standing up himself.

“Surprisingly, yes. A bit shaky, but not as weak as I was.”

“I still don’t feel as if I have a lot of miracle power,” Crowley confessed.

“You’d better stay here for the moment, then,” Aziraphale said. “I know how you drive, and I shouldn’t like to have you doing it when you’re not at your best.”

Crowley swallowed.

When they had been dying—when they thought they were dying—Aziraphale had said  _ till Death do us part. _

Aziraphale had offered him safe harbor in the bookshop before. But it felt different now. And the last thing Crowley wanted to do was  _ push. _ More than anything else, more than anything that he wanted from Aziraphale, he wanted Aziraphale to be okay with it. Aziraphale was so painfully frightened of doubt, and Crowley’s mere existence was a natural vector of doubt . . . “If you’re sure,” he said.

“Naturally I’m sure. Although, once you feel recovered—I think a spot of tea would do us both a world of good—I think perhaps we should go out. Just for a little while. We can take a cab. Or the bus.”

“Why?” Crowley said.

“To see if we have more or less miracle power depending on where we are in London.”

“You think we actually might be hooked into the ley lines after all,” Crowley interpreted.

“We both think the power we now draw on feels like decay and growth, simultaneously. Doesn’t that seem like the sort of—flavor, for lack of a better word, that you would expect from Earth?”

§

Crowley sunk a duck to the bottom of the pond, more because he wanted to hear Aziraphale tut at him than because of any real malice against ducks. Then he paused. “Ooh. That’s different.”

_ “Crowley,” _ Aziraphale chided.

“All right, all right.” Another miracle, and the unfortunate duck popped back to the surface right underneath another duck, which caused flapping, quacking, pecking, and commotion, just as Crowley had intended. “The power is different here.”

“Different how?”

“Less metallic. More like, I don’t know, forest loam. I think we  _ are _ hooked into Earth. We’re in a park, there are trees around, so we get something a little different than if we’re standing on pavement. I wonder if it makes any difference to what we can  _ do.” _

“It’s very curious,” Aziraphale said reflectively, miracling a breeze for a little girl’s kite. “With Heaven, it doesn’t make a difference whether you’re standing in the Hall of the Metatron or here on Earth. The power is uniform and unchanging, anywhere you go. Why would this work differently?”

Crowley shrugged. “Maybe just because it’s Earth, and Earth is all about variety.”

“Perhaps.” Aziraphale stood back from the railing. “If you’re quite finished inciting waterfowl riots, my dear, there is one other thing we ought to check.”

§

Crowley stared up at St. Paul’s Cathedral, ignoring the tourists milling around it. “I don’t know about this.”

“I’ll go first,” Aziraphale assured him, “and I’ll carry you if you start to get burned. I just want to know if either of us react to it.”

“You’re not Fallen,” Crowley said. “You’d know.”

“I know. I want to establish the nature and boundaries of whatever we are now. It might give us some clues as to what has happened.” Aziraphale started up the stairs.

Crowley followed him reluctantly.

They went between the pillars, and Crowley’s feet weren’t even tingling.

Through the door, and there was nothing.

“It’s not—” Aziraphale was standing ahead of Crowley, not looking at him. “It’s not  _ welcoming.” _

“For some of us, it never was,” Crowley said. He was standing in a church and it wasn't burning him. There was a coolly detached feeling to the place—Aziraphale was right, it wasn't welcoming—but it didn't hate him.

He wasn't sure how to sort out his emotions about standing in a church that didn't hate him.

“It feels—distant. Removed. I don’t think I have as much power here.” Aziraphale turned, looking upset. “Let’s go.”

“Are you all right?”

“Let’s just go.”

§

“I went into St. Paul’s with you,” Crowley reminded Aziraphale.

“Yes, I know,” Aziraphale said. “It’s still—the way the power feels, it’s—something unpleasant happened here. I can tell.”

“It’s a desecrated graveyard,” Crowley pointed out. “By definition, someone had to do something pretty awful.” It was the middle of the day, but he could still feel what Aziraphale felt. It was different from the edge of decay that Earth power seemed to come with. More of a feeling of pollution, of toxicity.

“How do you know about this place, anyway?”

Crowley was silent for a moment. Then he said, “This is where I came to pick up the Antichrist. Adam.”

_ “Oh.” _

“Which is why I didn’t want to come here at night. For all I know, Hastur still pops in for a smoke break, and I would rather not let anyone know we’re still alive.” Crowley took a cautious step onto the soil of the actual graveyard. “Hmm. Certainly—a lot different than it was.” Back when he was a demon, the place seemed to hum with power, like high tension lines, only these were high tension lines where you could pull the electricity up from below and catch it between your teeth, ready for use. Now, that power was closed to him, and the Earth power rested uncomfortably with it, as if it didn’t like to mix with the toxin. He shouldn’t find the absence as disconcerting as he did.

Aziraphale followed him, very tentatively. “It doesn’t burn me,” he said finally, after shifting his weight onto his leading foot and finally stepping into the graveyard all the way. “I wouldn’t call it  _ comfortable, _ but it doesn’t burn me.”

“Yeah. I didn’t think it would, but it’s nice to have it confirmed.” Crowley sniffed carefully for eavesdroppers, found none. Their Uber driver was on his mobile, no doubt complaining on Twitter about Crowley’s objections to his  _ ridiculously _ slow driving. Crowley had wanted to drive. Aziraphale put his foot down. “You realize, we might be  _ actually _ immune to—”

“Things that we aren’t going to test,” Aziraphale interrupted, with a certain amount of emphasis.

“Yeah. No. No, there’s no way to test it safely.” Unfortunately. He would love to  _ know, _ for certain, that Aziraphale was immune to Hellfire. “Still. I wish we knew how much we’ve changed.”

§

Crowley spent that night in the bookshop. And the night after that. And the night after that.

Their feathers were growing in at rapid speed. Crowley took his wings out one evening after the blinds were drawn and did his best to look at them, twisting in ways that weren’t strictly advisable for a humanoid skeletal structure. The backs of the wings were a vivid red. The undersides were paler, traced with grey. It wasn’t a bad color for him, once he got over the shock. But being remade—for the second time in his existence!—and not even having a word for what he had turned into . . .

“They’re not uniform, are they,” Aziraphale said quietly. He had come up behind Crowley, holding a mug of cocoa, and he brought his blue wings into the world too. “Paler on the underside. More colorful on the top.”

“You say it as if you think it means something,” Crowley probed, turning.

“Possibly. Possibly not. I leafed through a bird book last night. I didn’t find an exact match for our wings—of course, my book was English and European birds, not American or African or places further afield. But I did notice a pattern in actual, Earthly birds: the undersides of the wings are not always identical to the top. And in birds where there is a difference—I noticed crossbills and red kites, specifically, but there were others—the underside is lighter.”

“You think our wings are modeled after actual birds?”

“We are—” Aziraphale seemed to be choosing his words with care. “Not an angel, not a demon—exactly. We’re Earth Beings, of a sort that hasn’t been named yet. It would make sense for our wings to parallel the denizens of Earth.”

“Remade for our role,” Crowley said bitterly, “whatever that’s supposed to be. It would be just like Them.”

“Perhaps. We don’t actually know whether this is God’s doing or not. Or whether we’re supposed to  _ have _ a role. We might be left alone to work out our destiny just the same as any other creatures of Earth. And I don’t feel especially remade. Do you?”

Crowley looked away. “I don’t know. I think I used to be angrier, and They have  _ no right _ to take that. Only—what if I was angrier because Hell is angry, and Hell is where I drew my power from? How am I supposed to tell the difference between inside influences and outside influences?”

“I have,” Aziraphale said, “no idea. It’s a thought . . . what if your wings were only black because you drew on Hell, and mine were only white because I drew on Heaven? And if that’s the case, do our wing colors now resemble birds because we’re drawing on Earth—or is this closer to the way we would be, all on our own?”

“I don’t know,” Crowley said quietly. So much that he didn’t know. So much that  _ they _ didn’t know.

“They’re growing in nicely, those red feathers of yours. I’m afraid mine still look a little bit scruffy. I should . . .” Aziraphale trailed off. “I wonder,” he said slowly, “if we could safely touch each other’s wings now.”

Crowley blinked at him. “We couldn’t before?”

“Well, I always assumed not! It seemed reasonable that yours would burn me, and mine would burn you—although I suppose that isn’t entirely certain, is it, since we managed Agnes’s Trick—” They usually didn’t speak directly of their time in each other’s body. At least, not without Crowley testing the air for arcane eavesdropping, which was more difficult than he liked to pretend. “I always thought it would have the same general effect as consecrated or unhallowed ground, respectively, and—”

“You always thought you  _ couldn’t _ touch my wings.” Crowley was re-aligning some interactions in his head.

“It seemed logical,” Aziraphale said.

“Not because you didn’t want to touch me.”

“There were times,” Aziraphale admitted, “there were very long periods of time, when I was very afraid of what it would mean, touching each other like that. And the fact that I didn’t want any angel’s hands on my wings, but I knew that yours would have been a delight . . . I didn’t want to think about that. I didn’t want to face all the questions and emotions it would lead to. So I did my best not to even imagine. After Armageddon, with none of those considerations applying, I found myself thinking about it—rather a lot, actually.”

“Do you  _ want _ me to preen your wings?” Crowley did his best to ask it casually, and not as if he could vibrate out of his skin.

“I believe I would like that very much, my dear.”

“All—all right,” Crowley said suavely, and not the slightest bit strangled-sounding, “let’s—chairs! Let’s go to the kitchen. Er. Because. The chairs are better for it.”

§

Aziraphale sat backwards on a kitchen chair, wings extended. Now that Crowley had had some time to get used to the vivid blue color, he found that he ached to touch the new feathers. “These really are beautiful,” he said, as he drew up a chair. Put his hands on Aziraphale’s wings near where they joined to his body, and inhaled involuntarily. “And  _ soft.” _ Feathers that had never been touched.

Aziraphale’s wings tensed under his hands.

“What’s wrong?”

“Nothing. Nothing.” Aziraphale seemed to be trying to relax, wings rustling. “‘Soft.’ It’s a word that Gabriel used to use. Never positively.”

Crowley didn’t want to think about Gabriel when he had his hands on Aziraphale’s wings. He wanted to think about how incredibly soft the feathers were, about how lucky he was that he got to do this when the world could have ended instead, about how nice Aziraphale smelled, even if there was, as always, an overlay of book dust to the scent.

“An angel shouldn’t be soft,” Aziraphale went on. “An angel should be lean, tough, and ready for war. That was the way Gabriel saw it.”

Crowley was silent for a long moment. "Gabriel is on my list of people never to forgive," he said finally.

Aziraphale twisted around, making Crowley hastily let go of Aziraphale's feathers. "Oh, come now, Gabriel's not that—"

"He  _ is," _ Crowley said fiercely. “He was going to have you killed because you defied him. You’ve been afraid of him for years. The first thing you brought up, when I proposed the Arrangement: what if Gabriel finds out, what if he’s angry?” He stroked the top of Aziraphale's wing. "Of course Gabriel doesn't like soft. Gabriel likes force. His only idea of how to fix something is to apply force to it, and if that doesn't work, push harder. He doesn't  _ understand _ soft. He never understood you.” Crowley slid his fingers along Aziraphale’s feathers, making sure they were lying correctly. “He never understood how soft can be a good thing.”

Aziraphale let his wings untense, relaxing under Crowley’s ministrations like a cat being stroked. “I think, my dear, you might be a touch biased.”

“Of course I am. Doesn’t mean I’m  _ wrong.”  _ The primaries were still growing in; being the longest feathers, they took the longest, Crowley supposed. He paid special attention to them, making sure they were coming in well. Aziraphale, after all, could fly. He needed his flight feathers for more than just looking good. “You’re soft. You love good food. You love your creature comforts. What was that quote you read to me that one time? From the book where the silly sod gets knocked out and misses the battle.”

“‘If more of us valued food and cheer and song above hoarded gold, it would be a merrier world,’” Aziraphale recalled. “Whatever I’ve become, I’m fairly sure it isn’t a  _ hobbit.” _

“It’s true, though, isn’t it?”

“Yes, it’s true.” Aziraphale put his arms across the chair-back that he was facing and leaned his head down upon them. “He was in World War One, you know. Tolkien.”

“Poor sod,” Crowley said, and inspected the primaries on the other wing.

“He came out of it with a profound belief that healing was a nobler calling than war, and that people should strive for comfort and camaraderie and a place to live in peace, not glory. Gabriel wouldn’t approve of him either.”

“Gabriel can choke on his own bollocks and die. Soft is a beautiful thing.”

_ “Really, _ dear.” But Aziraphale’s wings didn’t tense. Not the way they would if he had actually been upset.

After a few minutes, Crowley had to admit to himself that he couldn’t prolong the pretense of preening for much longer, and that he wasn’t actually fixing Aziraphale’s feathers, he was just  _ touching _ them. “Is this all right?” he murmured, and was surprised at how soft his voice had become.

“I would like to do the same for you, in a little while,” Aziraphale said, and if Crowley sounded languid, Aziraphale sounded half-asleep.

“Yeah—I—um—nnk—yeah,” Crowley managed.

“Do you know,” Aziraphale said, “I was upset when we went to St. Paul’s, because it didn’t feel like home anymore. But I do wonder if that was always an illusion. Churches may have been ground where I could stand and feel more closely connected to Heaven, but they’re not  _ home. _ They never were. This is.”


	3. Chapter 3

It was a tremendous relief, after all the fuss Aziraphale had made about driving in the last few weeks, to get outside London and really get the Bentley up to speed. Crowley had felt a disruption in the energies when they crossed the M-25, but it was over too briefly to really examine.

“All right,” Crowley said finally. “Peak District National Park. Any particular reason?”

“I want to have a picnic,” Aziraphale said. He nodded to the basket in the back seat.

“There are closer spots for a picnic.”

“Yes, there are. But the Peak District is where I, specifically, want to have a picnic right now.”

Crowley thought of probing further, but he wasn’t a stranger to following Aziraphale’s whims wherever they led. If Aziraphale wanted a picnic in the Peak District, then that’s what Aziraphale would have.

When they got there, however, he found himself more suspicious about what Aziraphale was up to. Aziraphale didn’t want to use the first likely picnic spot, or the second. He wanted to ramble for what felt like miles, along an obscure trail where they met no other hikers. It was true that the place he finally selected had a beautiful view, looking out across a valley to other hills, with an interestingly rocky outcrop above them. Crowley took his dark glasses off. Aziraphale took off his coat and rolled up his shirtsleeves, which was a level of casualness that Crowley wasn’t used to, even in the bookshop. He considered teasing Aziraphale about going around practically bare, but that might make Aziraphale put the coat back  _ on, _ and it did something warm and fluttery to Crowley’s heart to see Aziraphale looking relaxed and happy.

The picnic, of course, had been packed by Aziraphale. Which meant that not only was there good wine but also finger sandwiches, cheese pasties, cornish pasties, pork pies, and Victoria sponge cake for afters. In the interest of anarchy and general disregard for social mores, Crowley went for the Victoria sponge cake first. Aziraphale, of course, bickered with him about that choice, and from there they strayed into reminiscences about food customs and order of eating things and why was it, do you suppose, that everyone had forgotten about the cheese course.

At length, when the food and the wine had disappeared, Aziraphale dabbed his lips with a napkin and gave Crowley a worried look, bordering on upset. Crowley thought,  _ here it comes, _ and wondered what  _ it _ was.

"Crowley? How does it feel, not being able to fly?"

There were several answers Crowley could give to that, ranging from chilly to outraged. He settled on, "I try not to think about it." Most of the time he succeeded. Sometimes driving the Bentley was a bittersweet pleasure, as ancient memories reminded him that this freedom, this joy of movement, was a simulation of something he'd never have again. Sometimes he tried to outdrive those emotions. They always caught up.

"I'm afraid I must ask you to think about it today," Aziraphale said. The upsetness of his expression warred with determination.

"What does it feel like? It feels bloody awful, what do you think?" Crowley looked away. "It makes me angry," he went on. "It makes me  _ furious. _ Making a physical ability, a whole way of movement, contingent on  _ good behavior. _ It's  _ unjust." _

"Quite, yes," Aziraphale said hastily, "but I was actually trying to address the physical—metaphysical—aspect of the whole thing. When you try to fly, and you can't, what does it feel like?"

This wasn’t Aziraphale being insensitive. This was Aziraphale pursuing a thought. Crowley was quiet for a moment. "You remember the airbase?" he asked finally.

“Which part, in particular? When—”

“When Satan was coming up through the ground.”

“You felt it more than any of us,” Aziraphale recalled.

“I wasn’t just feeling it. I was being  _ pulled down. _ As if I were chained, hand, foot, and neck, and the chains were being pulled downward by an unstoppable force. I was fighting, very hard, not to be dragged down through the asphalt, to the center of the Earth. That’s what it feels like, when I try to fly. Like gravity reaches up and takes hold of me. Like gravity itself holds a grudge.”

“But your experience at the airbase suggests that the downward pull is not gravity. That it’s Satan himself, or more generally the power of Hell.”

“Probably, but—”

Crowley stopped.

“I don’t actually  _ know,” _ Aziraphale said quietly, “and I considered not raising the question at all, so as to spare you a bitter disappointment. But—it seems logical.”

“Yeah,” Crowley said hoarsely. “Logical.”

“There are no humans for miles. It’s beautiful weather. It’s an ideal place and time to find out if you can fly again—and whether I can fly at all.”

“I hadn’t thought of that,” Crowley said. How long had that question been haunting Aziraphale? What had he lost, in losing Heaven? “How were you—planning on—”

Aziraphale brought out his wings with a rustle. “I had thought to try to take off from a standing start,” he said. “We could try to give each other a boost, but we would risk injury if it turns out that we actually  _ can’t _ fly.”

Crowley had images of being boosted by Aziraphale, much as if Aziraphale was helping him up onto a horse, only to tumble helplessly to the ground—which made it even more similar to what usually happened with horses, in his experience. “That sounds—yeah. That’s probably best.” He took a very deep breath and brought his own wings out.

It was still bizarre to see red out of the corners of his eyes rather than black.

“Possibly I should go first,” Aziraphale said hastily. “If I can’t make it off the ground, we’ll know that Earth Beings generally don’t.” He crouched down and then jumped, wings coming up and sweeping down.

The downdraft nearly knocked Crowley over. He had forgotten, or perhaps never known, the sheer volume of air that an angel’s wings could move. Back Before, he had done most of his flying outside the atmosphere. Starlight and stardust, gravity wells that made Earth’s look like the depression made by a pebble, but gravity didn’t have a claim on him, not back then—

He suppressed the memories with, if not ease, then the facility of long practice. They weren’t important, anyway. The important thing was that Aziraphale was  _ in the air, _ blue wings sweeping down again and again, the gusts buffeting Crowley and the picnic blanket. He was climbing quickly, and in a moment spread out his wings for a glide, skating swiftly away from the place where they’d laid their picnic. Crowley clamped down on the part of him that wanted to call out  _ no, come back, don’t leave me. _ Aziraphale wasn’t leaving. It was just—

It was just that Crowley had very rarely seen Aziraphale fly, because Aziraphale had always been careful not to remind him, and the few times he had, it had always been with a sort of bitter loneliness, the pain of watching someone you loved go somewhere you couldn’t follow.

But that might not be the case anymore.

Crowley stretched his wings upwards. And then, heart in throat, brought them down.

He was prepared for gravity grasping at him jealously. He wasn’t prepared to go  _ up. _

Up, and then promptly arse-over-teakettle as he struggled with the fact that he was no longer on the ground, and he was off-balance, and he flailed in the air like a human who had never swum before, and then he was falling, and he—

Crashed face-first onto the grass. Lay there for a moment.

“Ow.”

“My dear boy,” Aziraphale said a bit breathlessly, “why on Earth didn’t you wait for me?”

“Ow. Ow ow ow ow ow.” Crowley snapped his wings out of the material plane for a moment so that he could roll over more easily, looked up at Aziraphale, and, quite to his own surprise, started laughing.

“Are you quite all right?” Aziraphale still had his wings out and was leaning over Crowley. “Does your head hurt? Are you concussed? There’s supposed to be something with the pupils, for concussion, but I don’t know how it goes or whether it would apply to you in the first place. Can you wiggle your fingers?”

“I was  _ in the air,” _ Crowley said, and then let another gale of laughter take him.

“Crowley, be serious, I need to know if you’re hurt.”

“No, but I was  _ in the air! _ Don’t you see? Only for an instant, but it  _ worked! _ I got off the ground! I  _ flew!” _ Crowley closed his eyes, because if he didn’t, he was afraid that the laughter was going to give way to tears, and even though Aziraphale was the one person in the world who he would allow to see something like that, he wasn’t sure he wanted Aziraphale to see that. “I flew,” Crowley repeated in a whisper.

His eyes were leaking anyway. He jumped and opened them again when Aziraphale wiped away a tear with his thumb. “You did,” Aziraphale said, almost as softly. “I saw you.”

“I—” If he stayed here, sheltered by Aziraphale’s blue wings, with Aziraphale bending over him with his face full of tenderness, Crowly might start crying for real. He cleared his throat and sat up. “Suppose I ought to try again. Only I’m not sure what I did wrong.”

“Lost your balance,” Aziraphale said, “from what I saw. It isn’t just about using your wings, you know. Your entire body is involved.”

“Not sure I do know,” Crowley admitted. “I really don’t remember how this goes.”

“I find it a bit difficult to explain,” Aziraphale said. “I don’t suppose I’ve ever tried to explain it. It’s always been assumed that either you can do it, or you don’t need to know about it. I think—well, if you try it a few more times, and I stand ready to miracle your landings soft—”

As it turned out, Crowley needed those miracles.

It was, he decided, not unlike balancing a fork on your finger, except that the fork was yourself, and the fork wasn’t very well balanced, and instead of staying still you were surging through the air. Surging through the air, and then tumbling onto the third mattress that Aziraphale had hastily miracled onto the grass of their picnic area.  _ “Ugghh. _ Why? Birds do this, every day, and they have brains the size of a pea, so why . . .”

“I think the balance is different,” Aziraphale said, “on birds. Maybe if you get some forward speed—”

A running jump worked slightly better. Perhaps it put Crowley’s body at a better angle for takeoff. He managed several wing strokes this time before losing control, and managed to struggle back to the ground without a precipitous crash. “I think I’m getting the hang of this. Why do I have to get the hang of this, though? Why don’t I just  _ know _ this?”

“Six thousand years, I think,” Aziraphale said. “Six thousand years is a long time to go without exercising a skill. Or the muscles the skill requires.”

And then there was the moment when Crowley was in the air, and the ground  _ wasn’t _ rising up to meet him, and his brain went  _ I’m doing this. I’m doing this! _ so loudly that he almost stopped doing it, and then he was  _ flying. _

He was flying.

He was in the sky, and he was flying.

For years, centuries, millenia, God had denied him this, or Satan had denied him this, but now here he was. In the sky. Free.

It felt like a world made right. It felt like hope. It felt like Aziraphale. It was almost painful—scratch that, it was painful, how his heart felt, but he didn’t want it to stop doing it.

Below him, he saw Aziraphale take off from a standing start, coming up to join him. Crowley grinned wildly and veered out over the valley. If they were going to fly together, then they were going to  _ fly _ together, to chase each other across the sky. Dive, and swoop, and glide, and all the incredible things he could do now, because he was  _ flying. _

Crowley could feel the unevenness of the air on his feathers. It was something he would learn to read again, he supposed. He already knew what some of the shivers in the air were—Aziraphale, coming up close behind him. He yelled, “Catch me if you can!” and swooped—and thought for a moment that he had miscalculated badly, he was still wobbly up here, but no, he  _ managed _ it, he pulled out of the stoop with only a little bit of uncertainty and was flying straight again, and Aziraphale was well behind him, so he circled back, pivoting on the point of one wing as if he’d never forgotten how.

“You’re enjoying yourself!” Aziraphale shouted over the wind.

“Course I am! I’m  _ flying! _ Race you to the next peak!”

He didn’t wait for Aziraphale’s answer. He brought his wings down instead, going for altitude, climbing into a sky that no longer rejected him, and then spread his wings and glided towards the next hill over. It was bright, and clear, and wonderful up here. Better than Heaven. Here, there was rushing air, and the vibration of his flight feathers, and the green growing world beneath him. This was  _ living. _

Of course, if he kept just gliding, Aziraphale was going to catch up with him. And Crowley was enjoying this game too much to make it easy on him. He brought his wings down, down and back, long strokes that threw him forward in the air, like leaping. Crowley found himself laughing with delight, barely believing that he got to do this—how had the universe changed so much, that he got to do this?—and tossed himself forward again—

And then there was a shooting pain all up and down his left wing, and he staggered in the air, unable to make it uncurl. Too much. Too painful. And off-balance, and spinning, and falling.

Plummeting towards a ground that was, suddenly, very very far away. Not quite so far away that he couldn’t see the rock formations. Far enough.

A mattress wasn’t going to solve this.

Ten mattresses weren’t going to solve this.

Where did Earth Beings go when they discorporated?

Crowley tried desperately to extend his cramping wing, and didn’t manage it, and then something caught his flailing arm. Something strong, something that held on tight.

Crowley looked up. Aziraphale. Aziraphale with wide, sky-colored wings that right now seemed more like salvation than the white ones ever had.

“Angel,” Crowley said breathlessly.

Aziraphale pulled Crowley up into his arms. “I’m not, you know.” He looked close to panic, but his wings were strong, bearing them both up again, wheeling them back towards their picnic site with Crowley cradled in his arms like a bride.

“I don’t think—” Crowley had to pause to get his breath. “Don’t think I’m ever—going to stop calling you that. I lied. It’s not just your species.”

That won a small smile from Aziraphale, but it was gone quickly. He landed—the backwash from his wings made Crowley close his eyes—but didn’t seem inclined to put Crowley on his feet. Instead he laid him, very carefully, on one of their discarded mattresses. “My dear, what  _ happened?” _

“Muscle cramp,” Crowley said. “I think. Angels don’t get muscle cramps. Do they?”

“Earth Beings may. I had noticed, when I flew: it’s a more  _ physical _ process, now, somehow. Less ‘decide to go someplace, and go,’ and more—exertion. I’m sorry, Crowley. I hadn’t thought what it might mean, for you, not having exercised those muscles since the Earth was born.”

“Mmf.” Crowley closed his eyes. “I was enjoying myself,” he said, “so  _ much. _ And now this. How am I supposed to get back in the air, when—”

“I hardly think this is normal,” Aziraphale said. “You may need to exercise. Hone the muscles that you’re going to be using. Once you do that, I think it will go better.”

He was right. “There might be stretches,” Crowley said thoughtfully. “Supposed to be important. Stretching.” The yoga instructors that Crowley had tempted certainly thought so. Crowley hadn’t invented yoga, or even the modern, Western conception of yoga, but he had definitely had a role in people deciding that doing yoga was a sort of virtue. “I still might fall.”

Ironic, that a fallen angel should have so much terror of a purely physical form of falling.

“I’ll catch you,” Aziraphale said softly.

“What, every time?”

“Every time. Any time. Always. I’ll always be there for you, and I’ll always catch you if you fall, and I don’t care if it’s impossible. I mean to do it anyway.”

Crowley made incoherent noises for a moment as he struggled with how nakedly sincere Aziraphale’s face was, and how his heart seemed to expand. “You realize what you just said,” he managed finally.

“What?”

“You basically said, ‘till Death do us part.’” Part of him wanted to make it come out teasing, to disguise the part of him that thought it was the most important thing he’d ever said. He didn’t manage it.

“I most certainly did  _ not,” _ Aziraphale said.

Crowley’s heart lurched and seemed to harden over. “Fine. Okay. Everything we said to each other when I thought we were dying, we’re just going to ignore that—”

“I did not say that,” Aziraphale went on, “because I have absolutely no intention of dying, and even less intention of parting.”

“Oh,” Crowley said quietly. It was all he could manage.

“Can you stand? I think perhaps we’ve had enough flying practice for one day, and it’s getting on towards evening.”

§

“My dear,” Aziraphale said, at the trailhead, “you look exhausted.”

Crowley felt exhausted. He wasn’t sure if it was the flying or the fright from falling. “I’m fine,” he said.

“Under the circumstances, I don’t think we ought to drive all the way back to London tonight.”

Crowley rolled his eyes.  _ “Please _ don’t start that again, I can drive in my  _ sleep—” _

“I would prefer not to test that, if it’s all the same to you. Let’s just find a room nearby. Oh, and dinner!”

Aziraphale with his heart set on dinner was an unstoppable force, and Crowley was far from an immovable object where Aziraphale was concerned. Especially since the thought of driving all the way back to London  _ did _ make him feel tired. He held the door of the Bentley for Aziraphale, and then went around to the driver’s side. “Look for a restaurant on TripAdvisor, or take pot luck at the local pub?”

“I’m tempted to go for the local—oh! There  _ did _ used to be a place, a little shop in Bakewell—that’s not too far from here. I wonder if it’s still there?”

_ “When _ did there used to be a place?” Crowley asked. With Aziraphale, it was a very pertinent question. Aziraphale was probably still irked that Petronius’s oyster place hadn’t survived the fall of the Roman Empire.

Aziraphale looked slightly shifty. “Just last century . . . I think.”

“Hmm. Well, it can’t hurt to try, I suppose. If it isn’t there, we can still eat and stay in Bakewell.”

Aziraphale didn’t mention that Crowley had conceded the argument about stopping overnight, and Crowley certainly wasn’t going to bring it up.

§

The shop was there. It was evidently extremely proud of its pudding, and boasted a secret recipe. Aziraphale was enthusiastic. Crowley followed, making sure that there was a table open for them.

“This does look excellent,” Aziraphale remarked, poring over the menu. “I love finding little places outside of London.”

Crowley decided not to point out that the Bakewell Pudding Shop seemed to be doing very well for itself and might not qualify as “a little place,” depending on how you wanted to define it. “Not as much variety outside of London,” he pointed out.

“Hmm . . . depends on how far you’re willing to drive, I suppose.” Aziraphale folded up the menu. “You do enjoy driving.”

“Wherever you want to go,” Crowley said. It did not come out as flippant and casual as he wanted it to. Rather softer than that.

He pondered over it until the food arrived. Aziraphale seemed to be skirting around a subject, not actually  _ saying _ anything about it, but saying things  _ adjacent _ to it, the way he did. It was going to be up to Crowley to say . . . “Remember when we were losing our feathers?”

“I can hardly forget,” Aziraphale said.

“You said—” Crowley swallowed. He didn’t want to mess this up. Didn’t want to push. “You thought we were becoming human.”

“Ah. Right.” Aziraphale looked down at his food. “I didn’t, actually.”

“What?”

“I was quite certain we were dying.”

“But—” Crowley couldn’t think of anything to go after the  _ but. _

“It seemed to me that the only trace of mercy in the entire situation would be not to  _ know _ that one was dying. I couldn’t grant myself that. But I could do it for you. I thought I could ease your passing, and it was the only thing I  _ could _ do for you, so I—I lied.”

“I didn’t actually believe you,” Crowley said, a little unsteadily. “I thought we were dying too. I played along because I wanted to make things easier on you.”

“Ah.” Aziraphale’s eyes were still fixed on his fork. “I suppose perhaps the joke is on both of us, then.”

“So,” Crowley said, like a human probing a sore tooth, “you didn’t actually believe any of what you were saying. About retiring, getting a cottage—that sort of thing.”

“Of course not.”

“Right. Of course not.” It felt like a stab.

“I never thought we’d have the chance,” Aziraphale went on. “I thought we would die right there, in the bookshop. The only bit of it I meant—” Aziraphale’s face went on a complicated journey of hope and dread. “Well. The only bit of it that I meant was ‘till Death do us part.’ And as I told you today, I think now that rather lacks something. I have no intention of parting from you. The only thing that could change my mind on that matter is you wishing to be parted from  _ me. _ Death doesn’t get a look in.”

Crowley couldn’t breathe.

“Did you—” Aziraphale swallowed. “Did you mean what you said, when we were dying? About demons, and—and emotions, and—”

It was very important, Crowley thought, that he make his mouth produce words and not noises. It should have been easy. “Ngg . . . wha . . . of  _ course _ I meant it! I wouldn’t say something like that if I didn’t . . . I couldn’t . . . what do you take me for?”

“Someone who thought we were dying,” Aziraphale said, “and might have been trying to ease the blow for me. You have always been kind to me, after all. On occasion, more than I deserved.”

“You have  _ always,” _ Crowley said fiercely, “deserved it. You deserve the world.” He took a deep breath. “I meant it. I meant it completely. And if you ever want—if you ever want to get a little cottage somewhere—”

“I’ve been thinking about it,” Aziraphale admitted. “There are a number of areas which could do well, for that sort of thing. Out of the city, away from the crowds, but close enough to decent food. I think I would like a village with a bakery. I miss a good bakery.”

"Sea cliffs nearby," Crowley said, recalling their not-dying conversation.

"Or just hills," Aziraphale said. "A place to get away from humans, at any rate. They can be a bit—well, a bit  _ much, _ and there are things we don’t want to explain.” He was quiet for a moment. “Like flying. If we did buy a little cottage somewhere, I would want to make sure it was close to someplace where we could fly together. If you want to fly together.”

“What do you mean,  _ if _ I want to fly together? Of course I want to fly together! I want to fly together, I want to live together, I want to get up in the morning and be grumpy at things together, I want—” Crowley’s throat was tight. “I want  _ together.” _

“I would very much like  _ together _ as well,” Aziraphale said softly. “Are you truly interested in a cottage, though? Because I wouldn’t want to ask you to move away from the things you enjoy. Home is where you are. In London or in a village or on the moon.” He dabbed his lips with a napkin, and added, “And yes, I am aware that I just said ‘Whither thou goest, I will go; and where thou lodgest, I will lodge.’ Better sort of vows for us than the other, I think.”

“I—errr—nggh—I—um,” Crowley floundered. “I—yes. That. What you said. Vows.” He could do this. He could make his voice work. It had worked for thousands of years, there was no reason for it to stop now. “The cottage—I—I can’t really know until I try, can I? I might not like living in the countryside. You might not like to live with  _ me. _ There’s all sorts of things that could go wrong—” He took a deep breath. “And I don’t care about any of them. I want to do it. I want to—I want to move in with you. ‘Whither thou goest, I will go.’” He raised his glass, not caring that he had gone for local beer and not wine and thus his glass was not the sort one usually toasted with. “To the cottage.”

Aziraphale beamed. “To the cottage,” he echoed.


End file.
